Weekly Links (Week of Jan.4, 2010)

During our program, I used to annoy my classmates by constantly sending emails pointing to various links, stories and other content that related to the topics being discussed in class. In hopefully a less annoying manner, I plan to bring that content to this blog on a weekly basis.

One of the things Ram Baliga told us was that analytics would become one of the cornerstone technologies that MBA's should master in the 21st century. Here is a good write-up on the proliferation of data that is now available for analysis and how it will shape the future of business.

With Chet Miller we evaluated various employee evaluation models, including GE's A-B-C player model. This link explores NetFlix model of trying to hire, retain and compensate almost all "A" players and whether or not that is a good thing.

Following up from our case discussion about NetFlix and their eventual migration to a streaming model. Many elements at play here: short-term vs. long-term profits; customer input vs. decisions that lead to eventual business model changes; decisions that could lead to loses due to digital piracy or alternative models solving a customer demand.

This article explore the Nexus One phone from Google, in the context of how it will impact Google's overall strategy. VC Brian Gurley does an excellent job of looking at the broader impact of this device, but more importantly the strategic impact of the new business model. The Nexus One was an area of highlight in the final Global Strategy paper that I wrote with Ric Freeman and Wendy Perry.

Here's another Nexus One link that follows-up some of the cases we analyzed, including strategic challenges for HTC, Taiwan Semi-Conductor and Google. At least within the technology world, the spread of coopetition and partner/rival scenarios will continue to expand as the value chain is twisted in all sorts of new ways.

Stan Mandel taught us the underlying structures for funding and operating and entrepreneurial venture, but more so he focus on the mindset needed to be a successful entrepreneur. VC/Entrepreneur Mark Suster explorers his views of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.

Connect the Dots - Networking your Social Networks

As I was flipping through HBR this evening, I came across an article about Social Networking, written by Alex "Sandy" Pentland.  Dr. Pentland runs the Human Dynamics group within the MIT Media Lab.  Back in the spring of 2007, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Pentland, get to know about many of the really cool things being built within the Media Lab, and actually work on the project that is described in the paper.  My former company was a Media Lab sponsor and we co-funded some of the initial work in this area of dynamic social networking.  Needless to say, it was a nice surprise to see something you worked on (albeit slightly) published in HBR.

So what does this have to do with MBA programs?  Actually, quite a bit.  We covered social networks briefly in LOB with Dr. Miller, but only to the extent that people need to be aware of where the strong vs. weak links are within their companies.  Social networking came up again this weekend, during a discussion in our OpsMgmt class, as we discussed the connection between groups within the production process (product mgmt, engineering, production, etc..). What Dr. Meredith pointed out is that many times one of these groups will be outsourced, and then eventually other connected groups move as well because the communication channels break down over distances.  

This latter point seems to be proven out in Dr. Pentland's MIT research.  As much as I enjoyed using technologies like Telepresence, distance has consistently proven to be a huge barrier to effective communication and collaboration.  So why does this matter?  It matters if parts of your business are moving offshore, or great distances from where you are located.  Chances are, if that group is really important, then they are going to get tired of the communications breakdowns and look to move your function closer to them.  All the more reason for US companies to step up their efforts to bring expertise and skill-levels back up to competitive levels with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it's more than just low-cost labor that might move jobs overseas.   

1st Semester Summary - LOB (Part II)

The final project for the LOB class was a self-analysis paper and presentation, in the context of the topics we studied throughout the class, along with an action plan to improve the areas we identified as weaknesses.   Everyone was given 15 minutes to convey not only their analysis, but also an aspect of their personality that the class may not be aware of, or what made them unique.   I talked about my presentation in earlier posts, so wanted to touch on a couple of other presentations that I thought were very interesting.  I'm hoping to explore some of these topics in more details in later blog posts (interviews, Q&As, video discussions), but I'm working out the details at this time.

Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) - One of my classmates runs an architectural firm, and is in the program to expand his business skills to augment his outstanding creative and engineering skills. His presentation highlighted some work that he started in 2004, based on the inspiration that he received from the book Cradle-to-Cradle, which explores the biomimetic approach to the design of systems.  To say that this was "work" is really underselling his efforts.  It really was a mission, or a crusade, to not only explore this area for his own work, but to encourage a worldwide audience to help drive this thinking forward and bring it into reality. What excited me about this presentation were two things:

1. The opportunity to spend time exploring "Green" initiatives with someone that had been living and working in this space since before Al Gore invented Global Warming.  
2. The opportunity to spend time exploring how he created a tribe around his initiative, and how that effort spiraled into results that far surpassed his wildest expectations.

When Family Calls - One of my classmates is one of those people that you just know are impressive before ever meeting them.  They just carry themselves in such a way that you know they are intelligent, confident and successful.  They never get rattled, they ask interesting questions, and you're constantly asking yourself how they always seem to get things right?  This classmate of mine presented an interesting aspect of their life, and a decision they must deal with that I suspect many of us have to address at some point in our lives.  That question is, "When is the right time to prioritize personal growth or desires over family needs and commitments?"   In my situation, it's the realization that I have an obligation to take care of family in North Carolina, and that (at least in the short-to-mid term) means that I will need to sacrifice opportunities that would require me to move my family outside the state.  In my classmates case, it's the decision between a more glamourous lifestyle and one that impacts a family legacy.  It's a decision that I'm glad I don't have to make, because the consequences of any decision are more impacting than anything I have to deal with today.   

One of the downsides of a non full-time program is that you don't always get the opportunity to get to know all your classmates, as we meet less frequently and much time is spent in group study.  I don't know this classmate very well, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to expand much upon this aspect in later posts.  But I have a year, so maybe that's something I should make a goal for 2009.

Selling the Big Idea to Management - The final presentation that I wanted to highlight was a classmate/teammate that told us a story of trying to sell a future-looking, industry-changing idea to his upper management several years ago.  He talked about the research and prototyping he had done to create a working model for demonstrations.  He talked about the late nights and weekends he spent teaching himself computer programing and working with potential technology partners to integrate his system.  He spoke passionately about his plan for selling his idea up through his management chain, getting buy-in along the way.  And then he told us about the stumbling block that so many of us have encountered as we try and sell a new idea to management.  This part hit particularly close to home, as I've spent years trying to figure out the formula (timing, competition, technology trends, management bias, sunk costs, "not-invented here" syndrome, etc.) for bringing new products to market, or changing market dynamics through a new model.  

My classmate and I have put this at the top of our priority lists for 2009, to share our stories, experiences, scars & scabs, and see if we can come up with some better guidelines for selling that killer idea.  This will definitely be something I write more about in 2009.

By only highlighting three presentations, I'm significantly short-selling my classmates experience and background.  I apologize for that.  I would have loved to write more about my Indian classmates that speak 5-10 languages (the variants from the states in India), or my classmate that fights fires for a hobby, or the classmate that started the program as an IT administrator and now has at least 3 business models ready to engage.  

As the old newspaper adage goes, there are a million stories in the big city.  I'm not sure we have that many in our MBA program, but there is plenty of experience for me to learn from and explore in 2009.  Hopefully many of them will join the conversation here.

1st Semester Summary - LOB (Part I)

Let's continue with the 1st semester recap and dive into the Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LOB) class, which was taught by Dr. Chet Miller.  While my grade didn't necessarily reflect that I understood this class extremely well, in hindsight I'd have to say that this class will probably prove to be one of the most valuable I take during my WFU MBA program.  I say that for a couple reasons:

1. Dr. Miller brings so much energy and passion to every class that you can't help but have fun and be enthusiastic about trying to understands the concepts he's teaching.  His enthusiasm and delivery style definitely taught me the power of bringing energy to the room and allow people to gain strength from it.  It's something I need to better incorporate into my presentation style.  In addition, Dr. Miller was separated at birth from NBA coach Rick Carlisle, and his style throughout a typical class is not unlike watching a basketball coach go through a game.  It starts up with a crisp coat and tie.  The tie quickly loosens as the teaching begins.  The coat comes off after the 1st period.  The sleeves are rolled-up after halftime and by the 4th quarter he's pacing the classroom encouraging the discussion to another level.  We often worried that he may pull something as he frequently "punched" the air or slid across the room to emphasize a talking point, but as far as we know he never went on the Injured Reserve list during the semester.  
2. The core of this course is people and how they are organized, motivated, led or manipulated within a company structure.  It dives into optimal and flawed organizational structures.  We looked at personality traits and styles of leaders in different industries and levels of companies.  Leadership styles were examined in depth, to better understand what worked best under certain circumstances.  Motivation was studied in depth, in terms of compensation models, individuals vs. groups, goal settings and analysis of success.  And throughout the course, we were always reminded to balance our analysis of this content against analytic data, either through direct measurement or research in this field of study.  "So sayeth the data" was a mantra that we heard over and over, as "common sense", "intuition" or "gut feelings" were often proven to be in opposition to the previously mentioned analysis data.   

This course covered topics and business cases that I expect that I will refer back to time and time again throughout my career.  It taught us the value of creating systems that allow high commitment and high involvement management, and how to address people-specific issues within those systems.